Striptease
by Sera dy Relandrant
Summary: Scarlett extracts her first proposal. Set in the Fayetteville days.


Miss Rodham, the form-mistress had stepped out to powder her nose and consequently the young ladies under her tutelage were comporting themselves with all the decorum of field-hands. Tongues were sharpened on the whetstones of school gossip. Rumors were painted with scandal and gilded by malice. Small damsels drew their chairs closer together, the stiff lace frills of their pinafores brushing against eachother, miniature versions of their mammas. Little ladies. Only Miss O'Hara sat apart, working out the sums the mistress had assigned. But then of course, Scarlett wasn't _quite _a lady, many of them had often felt - her absurd and unfeminine partiality towards mathematics, her decidedly coarse temperamant (practical reminder indeed of the _mesalliance _she was a product of), flagrant transgressions of social niceties..

The gossip doing the rounds presently was Marie's first proposal, the first proposal, in fact, that any of the thirteen-year-old girls had received. Marie Benoir was a swanlike little beauty of French extraction. An inheritance that included miles of holdings straddling the Mississippi, millions in gold and a pair of arresting, Creole-black eyes were sureties that she would be without dearth of suitors once she was out. But she was not yet out, and consequently a formal proposal - complete with docile lover kneeling at her feet - was a matter of much importance.

"Of course it was only cousin Alphonse," she said to her devoted cronies. But she managed to waggle her eyebrows in a way that suggested that Alphonse Benoir was quite a catch. "But of course if it _wasn't _a cousin, Mamma would never have let me out of her sight for so long. With a young gentleman, I mean." She blushed prettily. Blushes became her.

"Did he really kneel?" demanded a tobacco baron's magnolia-skinned daughter.

"Oh yes," Marie breathed, her eyes far-off and dreamy. "Girls, it was simply the loveliest moment in my life - I felt just like a heroine in a French novel. Languorous and queenly, some dreamsy, ethereal creature, and oh I was wearing my white organdie. I assure you I looked quite like Clothilde in _Lumière de ma vie_." Her rapturous audience waited on her words. She smiled like a cat toying with a ball of string. "I made him repeat the whole thing to me later," she said, her tone implying she felt pity for those girls whose lives were bereft of proposals. "I have it in my album - you may all read it after lessons are over. _So _beautifully-worded."

"How kind of you!" a few gushed.

Marie smiled. "One doesn't wish to acknowledge one's virtues, tisn't modest but-"

"And you so beautiful too," a flower-faced rice plantation's heiress said impulsively. Her court of adorers caught on quickly.

"It wouldn't be vanity in _you _to admit that you have the best figure in the academy," one said earnestly, though that wasn't true - Scarlett O'Hara took the cake as far as waists, bosoms and legs went.

"Alphonse is quite a catch, for all he's your cousin," another said.

"Really, if it were _me _I'd still be doing the reel for joy!"

"Come, come," Marie said, coiling a strand of her silky, golden hair about her fingers. "You flatter me." Her tone implied that it was her due.

From the back of the room, an inelegant snort answered her declamation of modesty. "Yes?" Marie asked coldly, in her best imitation of Miss Rodham. "Do you have anything you wish to share, Scarlett?"

"Why's matter o' fac' I suh do, Miss Marie," Scarlett said, in her best imitation of Mammy. A few girls tittered. Marie frowned. Scarlett straddled her chair in a decidedly 'mannish' fashion. "You needn't play airs, Miss Benoir," she said tartly. "If the only proposal you've managed to dredge up so far is from your own cousin, I don't see what's worth bragging about. If I remember properly, he cuts quite a poor figure - what was that about his almost being expelled from the University?" Her eyes glittered maliciously and splotches of red suffused Marie's cheeks. It could not be denied that Alphonse's incompetence in 'book-learning' was monumental. Scarlett didn't care about it, but she knew Marie did.

"I suppose you've had more proposals from finer, more distinguished gentleman, Miss O'Hara," Marie snapped.

It was now Scarlett's turn to flush. She had never received a proposal - unless an earnest desire on Tony Fontane's part that he be permitted to escort her home from Sunday school once, counted. "I-"

A sudden squeal from Cathleen Calvert, who'd been leaning listlessly on the windowsill saved her. "Oh do look, girls!" she cried. "It's the boys off to school!"

Chairs were abandoned, scraped roughly on the floor, as the young ladies rushed to the wide windows to bid adieu - with fluttering handkerchiefs and sweet smiles - to the young gentlemen off on their way to school. The boys lifted their caps and smiled back at the pretty young things at the upstairs' windows. Stephan Bloxham, considered a leader among them, even blew a few kisses to his sister Emily though many of the girls firmly believed that it was to them that the kisses were addressed. Only James - known to the world as Cameron, just as George Wilkes was known to be Ashley and Susan O'Hara Suellen - Byrne, who walked by Stephan's side, eschewed any acknowledgment of the girls' presence, though a few of the lads ribbed him. But the girls were quite used to that.

When the boys were quite, quite gone Marie turned to Emily - a young lady whose friendship she was desirous of maintaining on account of the latter's comfortably balanced chequebook and dashing brother. "How Stephan has grown," she said lightly, even though it had been only a month since she'd last seen him. It was not a week since the Academy had reopened, after the Christmas holidays. "Quite a Don Juan, isn't he?"

Emily giggled. "A pity Cameron's not like that at all, and he's twice as handsome as Steve," she sighed. "He was over at our house for the Christmas parties, you know, and, my dear, the attention he paid us girls wasn't worth two cents." Cameron was an ornamental youth whose frigidity and utter lack of approachableness had endeared him in the eyes of half of Fayetteville Female Academy's boarders.

Like many of the attendees of the Gentlemen's Academy, he boarded next door to them, but he had never indulged in even the mildest of flirtations - or courtesies - where the young ladies were concerned. He was a Greek god, cold and beautiful as marble. In fact, his window was just across Scarlett's, but he had never even acknowledged her presence with a glance in those twilight hours they'd spent at their lessons, just a few feet from eachother. Cathleen, Scarlett's roommate, considered him an unbearable prude and had long ago lost interest in him.

Marie turned smilingly towards Scarlett, though her eyes were chilly. "I suppose he didn't think you lot worth his time," she said to Emily. "But I'm sure, Miss O'Hara won't have a problem with that. She's quite used to ensnaring far more distinguished gentlemen."

"I never-" Scarlett began, her Irish pride faltering at the challenge in Marie's eyes.

"Didn't you?" Marie tipped her head mockingly. "So sorry. My mistake." Someone chuckled.

"Oh but she _did_," Cathleen cooed, draping an arm around Scarlett's waist in the sugary way Southern girls had of embracing their heartiest enemies. "And you _didn't_. She's not afraid of Cameron Byrne. Nor of you, darling." Marie's delicate eyebrows arched. "Let's play a game, Marie. A box of bonbons from Williamsons' Confectionery, a _big _box-" there was a gasp, Williamsons' being the most exclusive (and expensive) bakery around, far beyond the average schoolgirl's purse. Marie did not flinch. "Against a proposal. Scarlett'll net Cameron in a week and we'll have a midnight feast on your bonbons. Treacle-filled, I hope. I do so love treacle."

"You'll never net him," Emily said disdainfully. "The very idea-"

A spark of pride flickered in Scarlett. She tossed her head and said, "Fiddle-de-dee!" It was most provincial of her and some of the more sophisticated young females looked disgusted, but she didn't care.

"Does Scarlett agree?" Marie asked Cathleen. She looked amused.

"Of course she does!" Cathleen insisted. "Don't you?"

Faced by the eyes of her classmates, there was nothing a girl of dignity could do except say, "I do." Inwardly, Scarlett wanted to pick up an inkstand - a heavy one - and hurl it at her roommate, but outwardly she managed to maintain the veneer of composure Mammy had instilled in her from her earliest days. She put out her hand for Marie to shake. "You'll have your treacle-flavored bonbons next week if it kills me, Cathleen."

**000**

_And it will kill me, _Scarlett thought sulkily, scanning through her mail. _God's nightgown, me and my pride! And Cathleen baiting me so! And that Benoir cow, why does she look at me so queerly? _What did she know of boys and proposals? She was a raw hand at this business, not at all like her older Richmond and Savannah half-cousins - products of Grandmother Robillard's first two marriages - who were so charming and graceful and knew how to string men along so.

Here was Sue's letter, misspelt as always. She wanted something of Scarlett's - as always -, a pink silk ribbon and how she'd sulk when Scarlett refused. The ninny, as though pink was her colour. Nothing seemed to be spotty-faced Suellen's colour, really. There was Carreen's letter, gushing about the beautiful romance Honey Wilkes had lent her, and some nonsense about wanting to be a nun. Carreen cherished her charming, foolish fancies - to be a nun or a nurse or a missionary, someone idealistic, altruistic - but they usually petered out in a week. Pa, talking about how late the rain was, and about the horse he wanted to buy from the Tarletons'... Ah, here was Mother's.

Scarlett clung to the letter, still redolent with the familiar scent of lemon verbana and homesickness washed over her again. Oh she _hated _Fayetteville.

Mother had enclosed a wide swathe of satiny fabric, eggshell-hued, lovely and delicate. She asked Scarlett to have it made into a gown for herself - something light and dainty for when they went to Saratoga in spring. Scarlett was flattered that Ellen had enough faith in her judgment to entrust her with having her dresses made - she felt quite grown-up. She studied the light, translucent fabric, lifting it up so that the four o' clock sunlight shifted through the delicate waft, coloring it pale gold. It would look beautiful on her, even though it was rather thin. She wondered how it would look, made into curtains.

The rose-patterned blue curtains the academy had supplied were _clean _enough, but they were trite, ugly, like a joke retold too many times. Like everything in the room, they were neat, decent articles, serviceable, but horribly drab. She rose and drew the fabric over the window. No, they were dreadfully thin - it would be really most improper she used them in lieu of the real curtains. Why the gentlemen next door would be able to peek into her room, at er, inappropriate times.

Inappropriate times-

She stood suddenly, her mind working fast. It was the sharp, raw, one-track mind she'd inherited from her Irish ancestors.

"What on earth are you doing, honey?" Cathleen demanded, looking up from her mirror where she'd been twisting her fair hair into intricate curls instead of doing her geography.

Scarlett gave a ghastly smile and let the satin flap to the floor, ending in a pale puddle at her feet. "Spend the evening tomorrow at Virginia's if you want your bonbons, Cath." The intensity in her pale eyes was frightening.

"Scarlett-" Cathleen actually turned around from her all-absorbing looking glass. "You aren't going to-" Scarlett waited. "Well, I mean," Cathleen, stalwart-souled was actually blushing, "Do anything rather, er-" She looked down at her elegantly-trimmed nails, unable to complete the sentence, restrained by maidenly modesty.

"All is fair in love and war," Scarlett intoned solemnly. It was one of her father's favorite quotations. "And this is war." She knelt by Cathleen's chair, tipping the little mirror so that she could see her face. Her green eyes were as hard as stones, eyes you'd expect to see over the barrel of a gun, not on a thirteen-year-old girl. "Spend the evening at Virginia's," she repeated.

**000**

Cameron Byrne ran his hands through his crisp, dark hair, admiring the way they curled softly on his smooth white temples. There was something of the narcissus in his boyish beauty, he'd been told, something almost effeminate in those long, heavy black lashes, those high cheekbones and amber-gold eyes. Any other red-blooded Southern male would have passionately loathed his girlish good looks, but Cameron wasn't one of them. His beauty was a thing to be nurtured, a task which he assiduously carried out, assisted by creams, lotions and hair-curling papers. He would have proved an ideal counterpart to Cathleen Calvert, though he did not know it.

He opened his books obediently, but his thoughts were not on his arithmetic. He was thinking of today's lessons, and of how Steve's hands had rested unconsciously on his throughout Latin. Latin was crashingly, crushingly dreary and Stephan had been half-asleep but... Cameron blushed to the roots of his hair, thinking of the warmth of those hands, how large they were on his own slender, delicately-molded ones, and how Stephan had not even seemed to notice. Was it an overture? Or simply negligence? He knew the thought would torment his dreams tonight.

"You look like you're thinking about a girl," his roomate, Ray Ashworth observed.

Cameron turned his face away. "No," he said dryly. "I'm not." He was careful not to face the Fayetteville Female Academy - one casual glance was enough to set all the silly girls next-door aflame with passion. Stare at one for too long and she was apt to tell the whole school that he was madly in love with her. His friends often rued the fact that he'd used his personal charms to _do _anything with the young ladies - which he could have done, with some of the 'faster' ones. But Cameron's tastes were... different.

"Well, I'm off to the football game," Ray said. "Will you come?"

Cameron held up his arithmetic book for answer. "Three pages." Ray nodded and departed. It was not that Cameron did not like football - he was masculine enough for that - but he didn't particularly fancy being too close to Stephan now. Listlessly he turned the pages of his book. The girls next door had drawn their curtains - something they seldom did save before they went to sleep. New curtains, too, by the looks of it, rather pretty - pale and satiny like something his mother would wear.

It was sunset, the hour he spent most often in his room. The tangling green vines that lay on his windowsill were still edged with a nimbus of fire. A murial of black leaves was slashed by the fading light on his glassy sky was crimson-streaked, and squares of deep gold splotched the bare floor and walls of his room. Carriages rolled down the street and dim streetlights pierced the lavender gloom below. How lovely it was - how could there be any life but city-life?

A lamp glowed in the window next-door, a lamp with a cherry-red shade he presumed for the translucent curtains were now pink, pale pink like the soul of an enamoured virgin - Steve had said that once about a girl's ballgown. Steve was so clever.

A slender dark hand appeared out of the rose-colored mist, busily arranging a few things. The effect was quite charming, like a Japanese watercolor of swirling birdlike tints and swiftness, and Cameron leaned forward, looking. He wondered whether the girl knew how indecent the curtains were - most likely not. No young lady in her right mind would hang them up if she knew. A slim figure followed next. Hands rose to pull out the comb that held her hair in place, and it showered down to her waist, which appeared ridiculously small in the half-light.

The figure had turned around, and he could see the outline of a bosom, uncommonly pronounced for one so young. His eyes trailed down the voluptuous line of shoulders, bosom, waist, hips, legs. Any other boy would have been licking his lips by now, but Cameron viewed it only in an artistic light. He was good at painting - a maestro with forms and colors, he'd been often been complimented - and the picture opposite him was exquisite.

And then something happened.

The girl's hands twisted around her supple waist, shoulders arched slightly back. It was like the action of a woman about to undo the bows and buttons that held her gown in place, to strip down the modesty of a lady. He had seen the slave girls back home stripping down at the river, while the elder men of the family watched, picking their choice of bedmates, but this was no slave girl. This was a _lady _and the grace of those arched shoulders, the half tilted shoulders, the trembling, voluptuous bosom... He could not bring himself to look away.

It slid off her shoulders, in a sinuous, liquid movement as though the fabric were alive. She stepped out of her dress, and he saw how slight her shoulders were beneath the frills of her frock. She looked doll-like, unbearably fragile in her smock and tenderness washed over him, as it would for a kitten. She moved slightly, and he had a chance to observe her profile - which was satisfactory - and her figure - which was more than satisfactory - in another angle. She turned around slowly, and he observed her from all angles as he would a statue he intended to buy. He knew it was obscene of him, something no gentleman ought to do. But as long as she did not know that she was being observed...

A hand dipped out and the curtain was drawn aside. He gasped, and two sharp, green eyes, staring at him from across the street, widened. The girl's red lips parted and then viciously, the curtains were slashed together. The lamps dimmed. There had been no time for an apology.

When Ray came back home, he found his roommate kneeling on the floor, white-lipped, as though in penance.

**000**

The Ladies' Academy and the Gentlemen's Academy took dancing lessons together. It was a time for gossip and mild flirtations - something the instructors considered quite healthy and correct, for after all, the girls would be married off soon and it wasn't right that young lads be deprived of the company of their female equals, leaving them only trashy whites and slave maids for consolation.

Being among the better dancers of the class - it was one of the few feminine accomplishments she had managed to master - Scarlett was much brought out. Cameron had the impression that she was avoiding him. And with good reason too... the poor pretty innocent must have felt violated.

At least she collapsed in a chair at the end of the hall, spent and flushed, her lemon-green skirts still swirling about her little slippers. Discreetly, Stephan tapped him. He had discussed the issue - as he always did - with Steve, and they'd both come to the conclusion that the only thing that could be done was to preserve the girl's honor. To propose to her. Cameron didn't think it at all advisable that he consider tying himself down at the age of fourteen, but Stephan insisted that it was the only thing a gentleman could do.

"You had no right to be looking," he had said, his words buoyed by the righteous conviction that _he _would never have done such a thing. Stephan was too honourable - in his most obnoxious (and irresistable) moments he reminded Cameron of Sir Galahad. "If you don't care about her reputation, then I do, and I tell you now, James Byrne, that if you don't propose I shall consider myself duty-bound to inform your father." _That _had swayed Cameron.

Scarlett saw Cameron approaching, wearing a hangdog expression on his face. She nodded discreetly at Cathleen and Marie, who had secreted themselves in an alcove. Cathleen winked and Marie smiled thinly.

Cameron drew up a chair timidly next to her, and Scarlett tapped her feet restlessly on the floor - but she did not move away or inform him that his presence was disagreeable. Cameron considered that a point in his favor. "Charming day, Miss O'Hara," he said, swallowing.

She tapped her fingers restlessly on her skirt. "Is that all you have to say to me, Mr Byrne?" she asked, words clipped, voice low so that Marie could not hear. Cathleen knew half of the story - bits and snippets she'd managed to glean from Scarlett, and she'd been shocked enough with the half she knew. Scarlett did not think imperative she burden her with the other half.

"I understand that my behavior-"

"-was inexcusable, disgraceful, libidinous, infamous, in short the act of a cad of the first degree." Scarlett was quite proud of her little speech - she had spent a day learning it up. "Well what do you have to say for yourself?"

Cameron had expected her to utter words like that. He was quite prepared for it and had rehearsed his part in the rigmarole with Steve beforehand. "Only this," he said and slid off his chair to kneel gracefully at her feet. Marie gasped sharply, and Cathleen's nails dug into her arms to silence her. Scarlett stared solemnly at Cameron. Her eyes were encouraging, and Cameron knew that whatever the posture was, it was not unbecoming. He knelt beautifully.

"Miss O'Hara if you will do me the great honor to consent to become Mrs Byrne someday, I would be honoured." He had the uncomfortable realization that it didn't sound nice to put two 'honoured's in one sentence, but he was new to proposing. "It is the greatest atonement for my sins that I can think of." It sounded like he was making a great sacrifice in asking her to marry him - any girl would be offended. He had it all muddled up. "That is, I mean, not quite atonement but er-"

Scarlett smiled companionably. "Oh you great fool," she whispered, leaning forwards and gripping his arm. Her green eyes were impish. "You've made your point and I suppose I'll take that for an apology." She rapped his head with her fan. "If you'll promise to be a good boy from now, I'll forgive and forget all. Now get up."

"Thank you," he murmured, rising. "You are too kind." From across the room, Steve winked at him. It was comforting. "So I take it that you won't er-"

"Of course not," Scarlett said. Her eyes said _the very idea of marrying you_! Cameron didn't know whether to be relieved or insulted. "Though I wouldn't take it amiss if you'd consent to grace us with the odd few courtesies now and then." Her eyes said _if you'd consent to grace me, and me only, with courtesies all the time I shan't press charges. _He opened his mouth to say something, but Scarlett had had enough. She wanted to talk to Cathleen, to see Marie's face. "Run along now." Obediently Cameron trotted off and before he had quite gone, Cathleen and Marie were rustling over to her.

Affectionately Cathleen wrapped her arms around Scarlett's shoulders and said, "I knew you could do it, sugar." Scarlett looked up at Marie with a sugary smile.

"Oh well, darling, you know it wasn't quite fair to Marie making her bet on such odd terms," she said with a little laugh, tossing her hair. "After all, I'm used to ensnaring far more distinguished gentlemen." If looks could kill, Scarlett O'Hara would have been ten feet under the ground by then.

**A/N: Marie Benoir was the maiden name of Eva St. Clare's mother in 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' - I've taken liberties with her age, but her personality has remained unscathed here. **


End file.
